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redletterdave writes "Apple is facing a potential class action suit in San Francisco's California Northern District Court after an owner of its MacBook Pro with Retina display accused the computer company on Wednesday of 'tricking' consumers into paying for a poor-quality screen, citing an increasingly common problem that causes images to be burned into the display, also known as 'image persistence' or 'ghosting.' The lawsuit claims only LG-made screens are affected by this problem, but 'none of Apple's advertisements or representations disclose that it produces display screens that exhibit different levels of performance and quality.' Even though only one man filed the lawsuit, it can become a class action suit if others decide to join him in his claim, which might not be an issue: An Apple.com support thread for this particular problem, entitled 'MacBook Pro Retina display burn-in,' currently has more than 7,200 replies and 367,000 views across more than 500 pages."

Even more specifically, the plaintiff has no purchase relationship with LG, and therefore no standing [wikipedia.org] to file suit. He purchased the Macbook from Apple, so he does have standing to sue Apple. Apple can then pass the costs of the lawsuit, by suing LG.

Also, LG could claim in a suit that their screens are not defective, that Apple did not follow the correct installation requirements for the screens. The consumer had no interaction with LG, and LG has not direct responsibility to the consumer. Any claim should be with the manufacturer that the consumer dealt with.(Apple)

On the other hand, I default to believing that class action lawsuits are frivolous. I haven't seen how bad the burn in is, and I have not heard the specifics of what causes the burn in.(

On the other hand, I default to believing that class action lawsuits are frivolous.

Enh.... I will go so far as to posit that many (perhaps most) class action lawsuits are frivolous. They seldom serve the consumer (that jeans lawsuit netted me 67 cents. yippie.) but sometimes serve to make ignoring real problems costly for the vendor, which I believe is a good thing.

What really cuts down on legal costs is having millions of potential plaintiffs who each, for the ~$50 of damage done to them, are not willing to go through the bother of even small-claims court (except for a tiny number, who can be paid off a couple hundred bucks on an individual basis). Can you cite any examples of companies being swamped by "thousands" of individual lawsuits over small-cash issues? --- because in the real world, that never actually happens. On the other hand, class actions frequently allow a too-small-for-individuals-to-bother case to get serious, top-notch legal representation, and take a big chunk of cash from the company (as they deserve for mass-screwing-over their customers). This is why all the big pro-corporate-interests media/political loudmouths (aside from the small fraction of them working for law firms) shout so much about "tort reform!" and try to push through legislation *weakening* class action abilities --- megacorporations overwhelmingly prefer to keep their I'm-bigger-than-you legal advantage over private individuals.

Can you cite any examples of companies being swamped by "thousands" of individual lawsuits over small-cash issues?

Tobacco. Class action status was rejected in the 90s, and they've been fighting lawsuits ever since.

Honda has had a recent revolt from hybrid owners [dontsettlewithhonda.org], if you want small claims. Over 1700 people that opted-out of a class settlement (for $100) and sued individually (for $10,000). The lady in this particular link lost.

Note my specification of "small-cash". Yes, if you've got a big enough complaint against a company (as in the >=$10k examples you've provided), then people will lawyer up and sue individually (since a cut of several tens of thousands, if not hundreds for the tobacco cases, will actually buy some decent lawyer time). The screen on a $2500 laptop is a marginal case --- how far will people fight that on their own, instead of just sending it back for warranty repairs and dealing with the hassle? For even low

I don't have time to do a big search, but the Honda example was pretty much as you describe. It was done in small claims court, so it was lawyer-free (at least from the Plaintiff's standpoint... I suppose a corporation has to send an attorney!). The original settlement was $100, which is on-par with a laptop screen settlement. The reason people sued for $10,000 is because that is the small-claims limit... it would be silly to start lower, especially given the $30k+ that they spent on the car.

Class action suits over consumer electronics are basically a scam that benefits nobody but lawyers. The lawyer offers a lowball settlement that is cheaper than the cost of going to court even if the company wins, so the company invariably settles. The consumer participants of the suit get a pittance that is not even worth the value of the time they spent filling out the paperwork. And the lawyer gets a little piece of each of those tiny settlements, which adds up to a nice payday for hardly any work.

I'm curious what installation steps would prevent screen burn-in from happening? Only installing in devices that automatically blank for one second of every five, maybe? Also, what would the consumer be doing that's stupid? Not running a screen saver once or twice a minute?

In this day and age, consumers expect screen burn in to no longer be an issue. Once upon a time it was the consumers issue to deal with because the CRT technology was still fairly primitive, but the problem was largely solved over time, s

Fair enough. There are possible arguments shifting the blame away from LG. Consumers using the things directly against space heaters seems a bit thin, but the power supply issue is a possibility. Oh well. We may know after all the legal wrangling is done.

Apple is 100% responsible for the end product. If there is a bad part, they should recall all of the affected products and fix it. If the problem was due to a faulty part and not assembly or design, then they should collect that from the part supplier. The consumer is never responsible for identifying the specific fault within a product then suing the manufacturer of the affected part.

Also, LG could claim in a suit that their screens are not defective...

I've owned only one LG product, a cell phone. After a month the screen started doing weird things like displaying upside down, backwards, mirrored, all black, all white. I had to boot the damned thing at least once a day. I sent it back under warrantee and the replacement was even worse.

By my experience I doubt it was Apple's fault, but the fact that Apple is using LG screens is one more reason for me to not get an iPhone (the others bein

Lawyers sue the one with the most money. If you sexually harass someone at your workplace, they will sue your employer, not you. You don't have any money to be worth a lawsuit (nothing personal meant there). However, your employer, will probably have enough money to entice a lawyer to go after it.

And the consumer is supposed to determine what part is defective (fairly easy in this case) and who made the defective part? That's not how things work. Consumer has an issue, they raise it with the manufacturer (Apple). Apple can talk to LG if they have a problem with the parts LG sent them.

They used to. They switched to LG, now they get shit LCD's. The first lot of Retina displays all came from Samsung. Apple got a reputation for having really good screens in their retina product line and have now switched to the lowest bidder, at the expense of quality.

I am no apple fanbois, it's just that if the defective part came from LG, why not home in to the manufacturer, instead of the seller?

Why Apple and not LG? Because Apple was selling a product it knew was defective. It is Apple's responsibility to make sure it's products work. Apple then should have went to LG about it. Apple used to have a pretty good rep about the quality of it's products but it this case they failed.

I bought the retina MacBook right after it was released (I'm using it right now) and it's the best computer purchase I've ever made - flame all you want, but I had the money, and it suits my needs.

I definitely have the screen ghosting problem, and noticed it relatively early, specifically when switching to the widget dashboard which has a dark grey background. However it has never, ever interfered with my work or entertainment. I'd call it a mild annoyance at worst.

If this guy wants to sue, then power to him. I suppose he's standing on principle. But I'll pick more serious issues in my life to worry about.

Oddly, it seems more of a software issue to me. It will "ghost" for a bit then disappear. It is bizarre and annoys the shit out of me.

My Samsung flatscreen TV does this too. It ghosts app windows and desktop icons etc. The ghosted app windows stay on screen even when I flip from my media center PC to a separate live TV feed so it must be an issue with the TV hardware. Restart the TV and everything is fine... for a while. It doesn't annoy me half as much as the growing dark spot that's eating it's way across the display. I'm not buying a Samsung TV again.

Why do we even have "over drive" systems in digital displays? The signal is digital and has a specific pixel size, as does the screen. If those sizes match, why scale the signal to larger than the screen size for the dubious benefit of chopping off bits of it?

Sorry, but ghosting in modern LCD's should simply not happen. Considering the Retina Display is one of the main selling points of the device, the guy has a point. The computer itself is great, but the models with the LG screen obviously have issues. It is a fallacy to ignore one issue simply because others do not exist.

I am no apple fanboi, but I bought one of the 15inch retina macbook pros for work reasons.
It has an lg screen.

Now don't get me wrong, I have a lot of frustration with this machine. Its the only machine in the last 2 years I have had to force turn off by holding the power button due to some weird osx issue. However I have never experienced the ghosting issue? Maybe it doesn't affect all?

I have one as well, and the original screen was an LG (purchased a week after they launched the computer, but not delivered for another month). I heard about this defect in the above-mentioned thread about two weeks after launch, but didn't notice anything for about 6 weeks after receiving it. Then the trouble started.

Exchanged for another screen - except it was another LG. Which promptly developed image retention after two weeks. This time, Apple Store 'geniuses' made out with a bullshit test that it was 'normal' and 'expected' - to which I pointed out that the Samsung equivalents had no such 'normal' ghosting at all.

Fought with the fuckers for 3 weeks. Finally, I had to threaten to return it for a full refund off my credit card when they finally gave in. I kept pointing out that a laptop costing over $3k Cdn has no business exhibiting such behaviour, and that otherwise I actually was very happy with the computer besides this one issue. They finally replaced it with a Samsung-manufactured screen - and this was back in September; totally flawless screen since the final replacement.

The clincher? You just have to ask them if they would be happy with an expensive machine that showed this shitty display themselves.

The computer itself is really a dream to use now. And yes, it's the best purchase I've ever made as well. Despite all the bullshit to get there.

It's not about how it effects functionality. The car analogy would be buying a really expensive brand new car which comes with a nice dent. It doesn't effect performance or comfort, but who in their right mind would be satisfied with that?

People's tolerance to hardware faults are proportional to the value and effort they put into acquiring the hardware. I used a screen with multiple dead pixels out of the box for years. This was the early days of LCD. No big problem though. I then bought an NEC SpectraView monitor for well over $1k and it had 1 dead pixel, straight to the NEC distributor I went, and then when they said it's not a warranty call I went to our ombudsman and eventually got it replaced.

If this guy wants to sue, then power to him. I suppose he's standing on principle. But I'll pick more serious issues in my life to worry about.

And if it is a serious issue for a user? Bad displays can and do interfere with the work of graphic artists. Then again said artists should be using an external display for work. I own a MacBook Pro, I'm typing on it now. I am also a photographer, I used to develop film in a darkroom, but recently got a digicam so I'm looking for a new monitor. Now if my display did not work properly I would definitely go after the business I bought it from, and not the manufacturer.

I think you have that backwards. It was the Linux devs. that had the onus of providing compatibility; not Apple.

That is difficult if Apple does not release what is needed to write drivers. In this case though it's an NVidia graphics system that isn't working right, and NVidia will not release the code it uses for Linux developers to write drivers. It has only been lately that NVidia has started releasing it's own binary blobs for Linux. And those don't work well.

It cuts both ways - Apple was one of Samsung's biggest customers. Severing that relationship is costly for both sides. Samsung sells Apple memory, screens and CPUs. Apple sunk a huge amount of cash into one of Samsung's factories in Texas for that very reason.

Provoking one of your biggest customers is not an entirely consequence-free action, unless your ultimate goal is

From what I recall, Apple was replacing at least some of the screens for laptops exhibiting this issue. Assuming that was their standard policy (which, admittedly, may not be a safe assumption), then doesn't the fact that Apple has addressed the issue in a reasonable way right from the start undermine the lawsuit? I was under the (perhaps mistaken) impression that demonstrable harm of some sort had to have been done. Of course, IANAL, and I can't find evidence that Apple was replacing them for all customers

Image burn in and ghosting are NOT the same thing. Ghosting is where images bleed into the next frame. Giving the ilusion of a ghost leaving a fading trail as it moves. Burn in is permanent, ghosting is 1 or several frames.

From TFS I can't tell what they're refering to, because it mixes both terms, and article is TLDR;

From someone who owns and uses a MacBook retina daily, I can confirm that it is definitely not image burn. The ghosting happens when switching between bright white and dark grey backgrounds, and fades over the course of 10-20 seconds. It's noticeable, but only barely.

Image burn in and ghosting are NOT the same thing. Ghosting is where images bleed into the next frame. Giving the ilusion of a ghost leaving a fading trail as it moves. Burn in is permanent, ghosting is 1 or several frames.

I don't claim to be an expert but I thought ghosting was a faint image a short distance to the right of the real image caused by a sharp bend in a co-ax cable which creates a faint out of phase repeat of an analog TV signal.

Maybe both effects are called ghosting. Neither are anything like this modern equivalent of phosphor burn in.

Ghosting is often used to described the blur caused by pixels slowly transitioning from one state to the next. What is happening here is more along the lines of "image retention" than ghosting. A static charge can "preserve" the state of the pixels in some of the cheaper IPS panels. It isn't permanent like burn in but it is annoying and a much slower transition than the typical ghosting. It is funny that it has taken this long for the issue to gain attention. I'd seen the very same issues with their cinema displays a few years ago. Never understood how artists could swear by Apple if the colors don't transition correctly.

I don't claim to be an expert but I thought ghosting was a faint image a short distance to the right of the real image caused by a sharp bend in a co-ax cable which creates a faint out of phase repeat of an analog TV signal.

Never heard of a bent co-ax cable causing ghosting but right behind our cabin there are boat houses with simple metal roofs, they reflect signals like crazy. Back in the analog over-the-air days we used to have lots of ghosting because the signal would hit our antenna, those metal roofs and bounce right back to our antenna. We've been on satellite for many years now and now with digital over-the-air broadcasts I assume it wouldn't be visible, but yes that's the old form of "ghosting".

Many LCD panels exhibit short-term image persistence that you can see when you switch from a display with very bright objects to one that is dark. This is different from permanent "burn-in." One might prefer a display that shows less or shorter persistence, but unless Apple made some sort of claim about low image persistence, I don't think that it can reasonably be regarded as a product flaw.

I have seen Dell LCD's exhibit burn-in (monitors made 7+ years ago). My plasma TV gets a bit of a logo or 4:3 ghost image but it's not permanent and does fade. I guess it's a hysteresis or long time constant decay of some sort. So, is the burning on the Macs persistent or an annoying but temporary issue?

You really don't care that your hugely expensive laptop doesn't work properly? If my iMac had such an issue it would be back at the Apple Store faster than you could blink. This is the sort of thing most people wouldn't tolerate in a 100GBP tablet never mind a 2000GBP laptop.

PLEASE please PLEASE let it be that the Samsung displays are just fine while LG displays are not. I really want to see Apple squirm over this issue.

It's not that I'm "Anti-Apple" here, but just the way we saw that it is clearly wrong for the music publishers to sue their customers, I see it as pretty damned stupid for Apple to sue its suppliers.

Apple sells things which are made of a whole lot of other things. When Apple started suing the supplier of their component things, they are attacking a part which they depend on. It makes me think of a bridge attacking the pillars it sits on. I just want to see incredibly stupid behavior rewarded.

Apple does this with more than just screens. I have the MacBook air. The same product purchased by two customers might have two different hard drives under the hood. If the components differ in performance or reliability it makes total sense that customers would be upset. It would be worth it to see Apple take a hit on this issue, since it seems to be a general business practice, and frankly, false advertising.

Not only that, a frequent argument used by Apple and Apple fans is that the quality of Apple gear is much higher than that of the typical PC. While I will not argue that point when it comes to the Mac Pro and all that -- their case designs are outstanding if not simply sexy -- the variable quality of devices within speaks differently. Fortunately, i have not experienced any of the problems others have with Apple gear beyond the cyclical obsolesence problems where Apple not only renders software obsolete, but their hardware as well.

And that's a problem when the same vendor controls both the software and the hardware isn't it? And isn't this what Microsoft is attempting to do with their secure boot crap?

i have not experienced any of the problems others have with Apple gear beyond the cyclical obsolesence problems where Apple not only renders software obsolete, but their hardware as well.

I have not experienced this "cyclical obsolesence" of Apple products. I'm typing this on a MacBook Pro r3.1 (Santa Rosa). It was released in the summer of 2007, and shortly thereafter is when I bought it. So in a few months my laptop will be 6 years old. Currently I have 10.6 (Snow Leopard) installed. I can install both Lion and Mountain Lion, the next 2 Mac OSes, to replace 10.6 but I don't want to. Actually because Apple is starting to act similar to MS, requiring Mountain Lion to be installed by download

It would be worth it to see Apple take a hit on this issue, since it seems to be a general business practice, and frankly, false advertising.

Why? If I promise to deliver a package to you within a week and one customer gets it in two days and you get it on the seventh I still haven't made any false advertising. On the Apple website they promise you a screen of a certain resolution, a disk of a certain size and as long as they deliver as advertised, they've done their part. Like you say it's a fairly standard industrial practice, as far as I know this is the same when you buy from all the big name OEMs. If the differences are such that I'd call it

Well, that's a very poor analogy. It isn't a question of when you get the product. Its a question of quality. One of the biggest selling points Apple has going for it is the perceived quality of their hardware. If you spent a significant sum on a new laptop, and found out the cpu you had actually ran at a lower clock speed than advertised, you'd be a little annoyed, right? If it further turned out that some people who bought that same laptop had cpus that ran at the advertised speed, and some did not, then

As someone who has owned both Samsung and LG retina Macbooks - I can confirm they both have the problem.

My current is a Samsung, and suffers from the problem. It's rarely noticeable at all, but I am not please with Apples response.(Though they did let me go through about 4 of these computers before I finally just decided to wait and see if the problem would be fixed - this is a $3700 laptopBTW.)

Provocation? Really? Samsung merely plays in the mobile phone market and had been in it before Apple.

I have always found it interesting that people are most often prone to blaming the "offender" over the "offended." Where the line is drawn over what is generally considered offensive is invariably determined by the offended and therefore the offender is always at fault. And yet, when you look at all the ridiculous and unreasonable causes for offense, you begin to realize that it's folly to presume the of

When the original Galaxy came out, there were an awful lot of reviewers who drew the obvious comparison that it looked a little *too* much like the iPhone, in comparison to the other Android handsets released around the same time - it's not like the argument was that it was like the iPhone because it was a smartphone with a touch screen.

It's also not as if Samsung would be unaware of what Apple might do in the face of that action - it's hardly Apple's first dance in the legal quagmire over

Now it's just a huge dark smudge in the middle of the screen, and it's relegated to the 'laundry room computer'.

It's my understanding that it's caused by overvoltage applied to force faster response times. That is, if it takes 10 milliseconds to switch a pixel from 0 to 1, you can max out the pixel (black to white transition) in 5 milliseconds by forcing double the normal 1 voltage down the line. allowing them to advertize faster response times (advertized response time is why I bought that model...) at the cost of product wear that won't accumulate until after the normal warranty expires. The brighter pixels literally burn out, not burn in.

Note this is not actually burn-in which is a permanent phenomenon, but rather ghosting which is a temporary issue. Probably still just a case of drive circuitry not behaving properly as your burn-in case.

It has been this way for several years. The only thing unaffected by their use of multiple part sources is the systems without displays (Mac Pro and Mac Mini).

When I bought an iPhone 4S, I returned it four times. The first two units had a horrible yellow tint to the display, the third was blueish, and the forth was slightly green. The fifth unit was blueish as the third, but less so- most people wouldn't notice it so I decided I simply didn't care at the time.

When I bought an iPad 2, there was horrible backlight bleed on the first two units. The third had a yellow tint (yet again), and the forth was once more slightly blue-shifted, but since the backlight had no bleeding or strange artifacts I decided to keep that one too.

Then I bought a Retina MBP... Same thing. Returned the laptop four times. The first four units ALL had LG panels and exhibited the ghosting issue. It wasn't permanent- it faded after time, but that time span was often some multiple of 10 minutes. You could "burn in" that display just by looking at the same thing for 5 minutes, then it'd take many more minutes for the effect to fade away. The only other time I have ever encountered this issue in the history of computing was when I left something on a Viewsonic LCD (a VX924 if I'm not mistaken) for more then 24 hours without a screensaver. That display had some crazy burn-in when I closed the simulator program (from the static UI elements), but it faded away afterwards.

Frankly, I'm tired of this crap.

I used to buy Apple because I'd get a top-spec product that was flawless OOTB. I had no problems paying for a premium because stuff "just worked". Well, that's no longer the case in both situations. Products OOTB are a total lottery, be prepared to return it many many times to get a "pristine" product (I wouldn't care as much if they didn't charge an arm and a leg for this stuff and market it the way they do). OS X no longer "just works", but "kinda works". There's a lot of broken stuff in the core, and even more half-baked and ill-concieved features bolted on top.

So I'll be voting with my wallet from now on. My next laptop will be a Lenovo. My next tower will likely be an HP, Lenovo, or Dell workstation. My next phone will probably still be an iPhone since the iOS app store is a huge chunk of my monthly income, and I'm sure I'll need a Mini to target iOS through Xcode.

Otherwise, fuck Apple.

I'm so sick and tired of their "we are perfect and we offer the best experience out there!" bullshit. This is no longer true and they are going to get fucking wasted in the market unless they get their shit together and start offering the same level of quality and commitment to ALL their products (not just the iOS crap) as they used to before the iPhone. I'm hoping they get hammered in court because they deserve it for these shenanigans. If you're going to sell one MBP with the same SKU as another, it better have the same damned parts or equivalent in performance.

I've noticed this burn-in. However, I've noticed something else about it that makes me believe that it is not necessarily the panel itself. I've been playing World of Warcraft in a window, and when I move the window, the ghost moves with it - it maintains it's position relative to the top of the window, not the top of the screen. This would indicate to me that it isn't the display which is ghosting, but something further up the rendering chain.

I followed some of the threads on this on MacRumors. Problem: A lot of the users there will automatically and unquestioningly attack anyone who suggests that an Apple product is imperfect in any way, or pick a random third-party to indict.

My experience has been that, in general, basically all IPS displays are subject to temporary ghosting effects. I have never used an IPS display which did not get some degree of these effects. iPad 3 and 4, with their shiny high-res IPS displays? Ghosting. My NEC monitor from a couple years back? Ghosting. HP IPS display? Ghosting. I've never seen an IPS display that didn't show any of this at all. Certainly, some are more obvious than others -- my NEC display which is a few years old has always had relatively severe ghosting, as does my iPad 3, while my shiny and somewhat newer HP display has less.

As soon as I received my MBPr I started testing to see if it had ghosting issues and if it was an LG screen. Sure enough, both were true. I returned it, and referenced the specific part number 661-7171 (that was the samsung screen) to replace it with. My local apple rep obliged and I had a nice new Samsung screen. Re-ran the stress test and it cleared.

My iPad2 suffers the same problem. The URL bar will get burned into the screen. Eventually it will fade away, but it's real annoying. I'm not sure it has anything to do with the fact these MacBooks are Retina based. If anything, it's the formulation and process they are using to make the screens.

- Apple reset the number of views in that thread about 6 months ago. Plenty of discussion about this in the thread itself. So 367k views really only means, '367k views since whenever it was reset'

- The atrocious customer service many of the complainants on the thread received coincided with the arrival and brief stay of John Browett, a British national and former head of Dixons, a particularly terrible UK computer / consumer electronics chain. Browett on arrival at Apple immediately started implementing a number of changes that reduced morale and positively fucked the chain's plummeting reputation for customer service. He sucked so badly, that he was summarily fired at the end of October along with Scott Forstall: http://www.cultofmac.com/198726/why-scott-forstall-and-john-browett-got-fired-from-apple-today/ [cultofmac.com]

- Apple quietly took out the LG screen (part number 661-6529) from their supplies of replacement displays sometime in late summer / early fall. The only replacements you can get from Apple now are Samsung parts (661-7171). I confirmed this myself with an Apple authorised 3rd-party supplier as I did not trust Apple to be honest about their supply situation after they fobbed me off initially with a 2nd LG display that developed IR.

- However, their plants in Shanghai are still assembling retinas with the LG screen (see thread for confirmation of this) - why, I don't know; maybe they have supplies to use up.

I manage an Apple Authorized Service Provider. Apple have an Image Persistance Test (it's part of a NetBoot diagnosis tool; can't just post the test online, sorry) - it displays a black and white checkerboard, tells you to look away for five minutes, beeps after the five, and if the pattern is still visible then we replace the display at no cost.

There is no external difference between LG and Samsung parts. Hell, we don't just replace the LCD; the entire display clamshell is replaced. This has been common w

Only on a thread about an Apple product would people argue that a flaw in something costing 4 times the price of the competition is "not that bad". I want to sell things to these people.

Not that I disagree about people juystifying the issue as "not that bad" (seriously, just get the panel replaced for free), but where can I buy a 2.4 GHz i7 quad with 8GB RAM, a 256 GB SSD, 1GB 650M and a 15" 2880x1800 laptop for $550?

I have been following the thread on the Apple Support Forums for quite a while, there are some infos missing.

a) The thread was reset viewwise at 600.000 views hence the actual number of views is much higherb) Only LG displays seem to show the issue, also affected by this issue are the 13 inch retina macbook pros and the new iMacs. Apple did not change their behavior regarding their supply chain even after months of knowing they had an issue on their hands.c) Apple seems to run a checkerboards test which bas

This is the consequence of buying from Apple. If you're unhappy with your newly purchased Dell you can return it and pick up an Asus, HP, Lenovo, Toshiba or one of the many other alternatives out there. Buy a MacBook and you're stuck. Unless you're willing to ditch the platform your only hope is that the replacement is problem-free. There's always the option of switching to Windows or another platform, but the lure of aluminum and cult of Apple evidently are too strong.

It comes with several; however, even though I'm a dyed-in-the-wool Apple user, and have been since 1976, I have also been an embedded designer for over 3 decades. And as such, I think I can safely say that this is a clear case of a vendor (LG) that never should have been approved as an alternate source.
Apple has been replacing the panels/machines of anyone who complains. The problem is that the Samsung panels that Apple can use don't have as high of a contrast ratio, and a slightly warmer white-point; so some consumers are unhappy with that, too...
Fortunately, it seems like the fear of losing the business to another "glass" supplier (like Sharp), has made LG fix the issue. So, if you buy a rMBP NOW, it likely won't have the issue.

That's a BIG 10-4!!!
One recent product design I was working on was an industrial motor controller/drive.For the design refresh, I desperately wanted to switch out the venerable 7-seg LED display with a nice graphical OLED display. Had a nice long-life (75 k hrs.) amber monochrome OLED display picked out, was nice and bright, cost was reasonable, display fit in the package, things were looking good...

Unfortunately, these displays typically would be showing a static image for LOOOOONG periods of time. O

There are plenty of non-retina LCD displays that have short-term image persistence. In my experience most LCD displays do this to some degree, although some seem to be better than others in this respect. Apple's claims about their screen regard high resolution and good colors--I don't think they've made any particular claims about short image persistence. Apple has made it pretty clear what they mean by a "retina" display--one that at a normal viewing distance has a pixel density greater than what the retin